And then back in the restaurant – remember the restaurant – it turns out I misheard the soup and when it arrives it is, in fact, cold avocado and bacon – which is, if you think about it, cold, salty, greenish-grey . . . basically like drinking the phlegm of a stranger . . . But, still – I’m published.
Not that I’m making a living – to do that, I lead workshops. That’s what you do when you can’t write yet: you lead workshops for other people who can’t write yet, and hope they can’t write yet a little bit more than you can’t.
I was just amazed to have a job, but then I was amazed all over again because I worked with people in mental hospitals and prisons and day-care centres and elderly care facilities – like the one that had a sign on the wall that said ‘Today is Wednesday’ – every day of the week. Over and over, repeating and repeating until I did believe it was true.
The people I worked with didn’t even have their proper names: they were wrinklies and dafties and window-lickers – but once you start writing, you get to pick your proper name and the words to say what you need and what you want. And you live in interesting times – because sometimes, if you meet a human being who thinks you’re not really a human being at all, then you don’t show them that poem you wrote, because a poem is a very human thing and it might disturb them. But sometimes . . . you just go for it – get out of your head, make a bigger happy place.
Like the lady I worked with on a drama project: devising characters and scenes. She was a visually impaired person and she was quite quiet. She would come into rooms and work her way round the walls and not say anything and then she would just sit. She decided she was going to play the part of a nymphomaniac air hostess slash fashion model. And because I lacked faith, I tried to stop her. But she would not be stopped.
And we did the first session and the second session and I was wrapping things up and she interrupted. She said, ‘I have a model walk. I want to show you my model walk.’ And she stood up – this lady who had never been able to see anything – and she walked right down the middle of the room like a model and then she did a catwalk turn and she walked back. And she was in no way confused about who she was – she knew exactly who she was. And she wanted to be more of the same.
So when people come up to me and say, ‘Ah, but language is essentially meaningless. When I say the word chair, I mean something completely different to what you mean when you say chair . . .’
I don’t actually have any time for that.
Point One: what exactly are you using to tell me that language is meaningless?
Point Two: your chair makes you happy and my chair makes me happy, and if we need any more chair-related information it will be in the surrounding sentence, or paragraph, or – heaven help us – chair-based book. And meanwhile I do not believe that if I raced into Wittgenstein’s study and yelled, ‘Fire!’ he’d just say, ‘What do you mean, exactly?’ . . .
No. He’d be legging it out of the building like everybody else. And if he didn’t, natural selection would render him toasty.
Words are power – it’s a cliché, but it’s true. Why else would dictators bother to lock up poets – it’s not just because poets are often appalling people. Politicians know we are easier to handle when they have our words and we are scared and alone and silent.
But human beings, we’re good at words; give us half a chance, a quarter of a chance, any chance at all, and we’re all over them. We can manage even very strange and subtle meanings. For example, when you’re with someone in a restaurant – table for two – and they reach out and touch your hand and they tell you, ‘You know . . . you’re a very special person.’ You know what that means. We all do know what that means – you’re chucked. It’s a reverse meaning, it means he’s leaving you, changing his number, marrying someone else – but he can’t tell you, because of his whole spinal column having been replaced with these strips of gingham.
Advertisers, lawyers, spinners . . . liars – they think we’re daft, but we’re not. We can work things out. For instance, in 1983 a wordsmith of sorts coined the phrase repetitive administration of legitimate force. Which is a fine phrase.
Repetitive – that’s a boring, over-and-over sort of word.
Administration – that’s boring over-and-over filing, office work.
Of Legitimate – that’s legal and fine and dandy, boring filing.
Force – well, that is a bit scary – but in an office, what’s it going to involve: paper cuts, a hullabaloo in a quantity surveyor’s?
Repetitive administration of legitimate force – a phrase coined in 1983 by a US Army spokesman to describe beating someone in custody and not stopping until they were dead.
We can work it out.
And it’s not just the big manipulations – it’s those little words, over and over, seeping in.
My mother recently moved to a picturesque, English country village where the local newsagent did not carry the Dundee Courier & Advertiser. So she took advice and delivery of a popular daily newspaper and she lasted, ladies and gentlemen, one week. Seven days, until her levels of anxiety were so high that she had to stop – she was coming down in the mornings desperately hoping she could open her door and immediately see a black, gay, Gypsy, French, Polish, pre-operative transsexual single mother on benefits, just so that she could do all her hating in one go and still have time for getting to the shops.
All of those words, repeating and repeating: you should hate more, these people – you should fear more, these people – you should be surveilled more, by these people – war is a sad necessity. Over and over until we make them true.
Which is kind of politically incorrect. Then again, I don’t know about political correctness. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I would quite like my fire-fighters to be able to say they fight fire – because fire is a bad thing, not its fault – but turning up and talking to it roughly will not do the trick. It needs fighting.
I missed my grandfather by half an hour, partly because I couldn’t translate ‘quite poorly’ into ‘could die at any moment’.
The truth, that’s what I need. That’s what gets things done.
Václav Havel, great writer, decided that if enough people in Czechoslovakia told themselves the story that Communism was over in Czechoslovakia, and were in the story that Communism was over in Czechoslovakia, then Communism would be over in Czechoslovakia. And it worked. He called it The Power of the Powerless.
Raphael Lemkin – a man of whom very few people have heard. He invented the word genocide. He put it in the dictionary, so he could keep on working to defeat it. He defined it, he found its proper name, so he could make it stop.
Great writers. They’re part of why it’s a high-status thing to be a writer. And yes, it is a glorious vocation. But if you think about it, a percentage of people who write are just going to be people like me, and if you are people like me, then you can make writing petty and narcissistic in a heartbeat.
Like the time when I was in Sweden and I was thinking, ‘I could be big in Sweden – I mean, what ever really happens here? Apart from the Nobel Prize for Literature . . .’ And I do an event in Stockholm and it goes really well, and afterwards I have a big queue full of people who want me to put my signature on my books. And there’s this woman in the queue and she works her way along and when she reaches me she says, ‘Can you write something encouraging.’
And I’m thinking, ‘I’m not just going to be big in Sweden. I’m going to be a guru for Swedes everywhere.’ And I say, ‘Oh, have you been having a dark patch?’
No, no – it’s just that I’ve started the book three times and I just can’t seem to get through it.
Which is fair enough. I was there to make her feel better, not the other way around.
The writer’s life – arguing with people you made up earlier in deafening and compulsory isolation, in order to please strangers you probably will never, and probably should never, meet.
But that’s not a story to tell yours
elf, because then you’ll believe it and you’ll have to run – to festivals, readings, the openings of envelopes, just on the road. Where I do want to appear to be witty and friendly and wise, but my entire spinal column has been replaced with a xylophone of pain, and meanwhile I would just like, sometimes, to take advantage of my journeying for flirting. Romance.
Your incredulous silence does you no credit.
I get no help anywhere else.
‘Are you A.L. Kennedy?’
Yes.
‘Are you a man?’
No.
‘You’re doing a man’s job.’
Well, no, I would like to think the whole typing thing could be attempted by people of all genders, but I do know where this is heading . . .
‘Are you a lesbian?’
No. But thanks for asking.
‘Well, you’re booked in to read in the great, big, out-there gay jamboree tent.’
Which I’m sure will be lovely, if inappropriate, as I have previously mentioned I am not myself a gay person. Very happy to know there is a great big rainbow of sexual orientations and types of love. There is not, in fact – and I know this from bitter personal experience – enough love in the world. But, for me, love would be for the gentlemen.
‘We’ll have to rewrite the programme.’
Better than me rewriting my life.
And angels and ministers of grace defend me from those festival parties where I have been wrongly described in my absence and then I have to spend those vital first twenty flirting minutes trapped in a corner with some, yes, very nice, earnest young woman with short hair who wants to tell me about how the Outward Bound course she went on has really done wonders for her confidence, because by the time I get clear of her there will be nobody left for me. Except the tweedy men who call me a lady typist – or the one who said, ‘Oh, you’re so clever, I just want to kiss your brain.’
And how am I expected to travel and to get home after all this fun? – on a plane. What is a plane? Death with snacks. Before you even get aboard, they fingerprint you, they search you, they photograph you, they shout at you – that’s pretty much your first day in prison, but without the sex.
And at home, the words are waiting. What is it like: working with words? Well, it’s a little bit like taking an infinitely large box containing an infinitely large number of small, possibly furry animals – a bit like hamsters – and then trying to set them out, in order – stay still – one after another – don’t do that – and hoping that you can compel them to say their names in order – stop it – in such a way that anyone other than yourself will understand, without your having to hit them with a hammer.
And meanwhile you can hear them thinking, ‘Found your voice, did you? Maybe next time you’ll find some characters and a plot. Oh, and you’ve won some awards . . . you’ll probably never write again. Or better yet – you will – and it’ll all be shite.’
I don’t even win awards properly. The nicest award I ever got was from the Lannan Foundation – and they’re good people, they’re American people, they just phone you up and tell you they are giving you a (technical term here) a big wudge of cash. And all you have to do is answer the telephone competently when they call. When I got the call? I’d just had dental surgery and was planning to spend my evening running up and down the corridor, making noises you would associate with putting a puppy in a microwave. And that’s when the Lannan Foundation calls.
WHHAgh.
‘Hello. Is A.L. Kennedy there? This is the Lannan Foundation. We would like to give you a (technical term) big wudge of cash.’
E-aagh. Thass me.
‘O-kay. And are you in perfect medical health at this time?’
I’m taking a lot of drugs.
‘I see . . . the bohemian lifestyle . . .’
No. I’m in pain
‘Yes, the pain of a sensitive soul, lost in an uncomprehending universe.’
No. I just have a hole in my face.
I mean, I live on caffeine, Complan and crisps – that is, not all the food groups. My life is ridiculous, I get lost, I get tired and bewildered, but I keep on because I get to make stories. I get to be someone I’ve never been, to go somewhere I can never go, do things I can never do – but I am and I do and I can. I make something out of nothing – that overturns every natural law.
I tell you a story . . . I can tell you a story now . . . about toothache. The way that you have toothache if maybe there’s something wrong with a nerve somewhere, and the more you think about it, the more it hurts, throbbing and aching and deeper and stronger and then maybe it gets sharper, really kind of stabs, and it seems to ooze into your other teeth and then the whole jaw and that side of the face, and it’s just . . .
It’s only words. Airy nothings, colours of breath, and when you breathe in you feel fine and when you breathe out you’re better still.
I’ll tell you a better story. And this constitutes the audience participation section of the show, about which you were not warned earlier. So I will ask my lovely lighting man to bring up the lights so that I can see you. There. But it’s okay. It’s audience participation lite. All you have to do is make a magical pointy finger. And all I have to do is stand here and wait until all of you have made a magical pointy finger, or until the end of time, whichever comes sooner. I can see you . . .
And while you wait for the magic to gather in your magical pointy finger, all you have to do is think of someone who makes you smile. Maybe think of the way they smile, the way they sound, or walk, the touch of their hand, the scent of their hair – all the things that mean that when you think of them, you just smile. And in a moment, together, we are going to think of that person who makes us smile and we are going to write together on the air, three little words that should be worn out, that should be tired . . . but we’re going to think of that person clearly and strongly and together we’re going to write on the air with our magical pointy finger – to them and for them – i love you.
I write it backwards to help.
But it’s only words – they should be able to make you smile. Or feel.
Let me tell you one last story, and this is a story you can be in, as if you were a writer. If you wish. You’ll need your magical pointy finger again. It’s okay, you’re not joining a cult. And in this story you may want to imagine that your whole hand is beginning to fill with golden light – it’s a warm and lovely and very fine golden light. And it rises from your wrist, into your palm, into the roots of each finger and on into each joint – warm and very beautiful – and finally your whole hand is full of golden light. It’s maybe tingly. It’s as if you’re gloved in light. And while the golden light builds even more in your hand and your magical pointy finger, you can – if you wish – think of that place (it’s usually the solar plexus) where you feel that little spark when you think of someone who makes you smile. And maybe you would like to think that if at any time a part of you had seemed to fall off and turn to dust and blow away, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it just hid in that place, where you feel that spark. And maybe – if you wish – you can touch your finger now, full of light, to that place and you can light yourself with thinking, with the way that words wind and bind around each other: light and delight and enlightenment. And maybe you can always do this. Maybe you have whatever you need to make whatever you need to make. If you wish. Your story. You can take it home. It comes free with the pointy finger.
But it’s only words – dull little, plain little words like yes, no, up, the – but look what they do. I never fell out of love with words. Back in London, when I won the prize, I didn’t feel anything, because I don’t write for prizes. They are very nice. Pringles and sex are nice. Very nice. But I don’t write for Pringles. And because of a slight miscalculation, I don’t really write for sex. Which is a good thing, because the only way – I hate to say this – to really do it is for love. Which is a good thing. And a terrible thing – it means people can manipulate me, can not pay me, I’ll work every ho
ur God sends, I can have entire relationships with real human beings – beginning, middle, end – and not absolutely notice. But that’s just currently my story. I can change that. I can rewrite. And I still get to be barefoot and writing and all lit up. Or barefoot and reading and all lit up – it’s the same thing. I love that should I wish to, should I need to, I can have the best possible words for all occasions – like – like, words for love. If I want to, I can tell you . . .
Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter;
Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty:
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare:
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e’er loved, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor and speech unable,
Beyond all manner of so much, I love you.
Words that I have because somebody wrote them and left them for me to find. And let’s not get into that stuff about Shakespeare being a dead white male, so we don’t get to play with his stuff – his words aren’t male or white, or dead. He’s not for everyone, but he does it for me. In the play it’s a bit oversold because she’s lying – one of the ugly sisters in King Lear: Regan, Goneril, Goneril, Regan . . . they’re always together . . . you’re never sure which is which . . . it’s like Ant and Dec . . .
The point is, I get to have those words, I get to have the music of them in me, to make me a different shape, to give to other people and be music in them, and I love that. And words aren’t just things to love, they can give you a way of being alive. Being with words, working with words, it’s like being in love. It’s a way of being wide-eyed, open-mouthed, like a lover . . .
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
On Writing Page 32